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ericaandrews
Community Member

Completely RIDICULOUS: Spam / Scam flood today from a single user

How did Upwork ALLOW one person to repost basically the same job 84 times with their EMAIL address in each job and all with the same title  'i need good work', in under 24 hours?

 

**Edited for community guidelines**

 

The web development, java, programming etc searches are flooded with this garbage today.

 

Please take these down and please STOP allowing this type of stuff to be posted. 

 

There is no reason to allow any client to keep reposting the same job title repeatedly, and certainly not 84 times in under 24 hours.  Your system should really be checking for simple things like that and stopping the client when they try to submit a 'duplicate' post.

Freelancers deserve better than this and more respect for our time.

**Edited for community guidelines**

 

Yes, I know the photo and URL will get 'edited', but I am not going to sit here an 'flag' all 84 of these for Upwork when Upwork should have never allowed them to be posted to begin with

 

8 REPLIES 8
BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for flagging this, CJ.

 

I have shared your report with our team. 

~ Bojan
Upwork
nebojsa-l
Community Member

I have been reporting them for days, but it seems no one at upwork works on resolving complaints.

Hi Nebojsa,

From what I can see, I honestly think people at Trust & Safety are working to take them down, but they're going up as fast as the agents are removing them.

This is not the most efficient way to go and I think Upwork should have some sort of strategic plan for managing the situation. Upwork says it is working on the problem, but the solutions, if they've found any, are not having an obvious impact.

I'm no pro, but I can scroll through a list and click on a "Delete" button pretty quickly if they're looking for an extra hand(s.)

Hi Bojan,

 

Respectfully, can you explain why individual flagging is necessary when a simple search reveals 99% of all contact scams?

 

the-right-writer
Community Member

Upwork hears the cries of freelancers; they have their own concerns. Upwork can perform a search for the following ((t.me OR telegram OR whatsapp OR message me OR gmail or ***@***) This will give them 99% of contact posts in any category. Now if a freelancer can identify the scams, why doesn't Upwork do it? Instead, the freelancers are given the busy work of flagging to keep them busy and feeling like something is happening. As long as Upwork is making money/ benefitting from vastly inflated job posts, absolutely nothing will change. Upwork does not care that quality freelancers are quitting because of the fewer and fewer real jobs, and the platform's spiraling reputation. Freelancers are just cogs, and there are plenty more, dam the quality. The marketing will more than compensate for the bad press.

 

I have asked Upwork repeatedly why freelancers should spend countless unpaid hours sending in violaters when Upwork can prevent them from even appearing. There has never been a response. Does anyone really believe "they are working on it"? Of course not. Upwork can cheaply, easily, and quickly resolve this immediately. They run the platform. All that money spent on branding and PR while ignoring the infratstructure is playing a dangerous game.

 

 

yofazza
Community Member

I think from UW's POV there's no immediate benefit if they deal with this probem.

 

Between clients & FLs, dealing with Client's problems is far more important. They're being scammed by FLs all the time as well. It's far more important to deal with this, because money flows from them. The fees are coming from them.

 

Including about branding & PR, "perfect place to get your job done" is a much more important target to think about.

 

How about dealing with FL's problem? This spam & scam problem in particular?

 

  1. Implementing filters, vetting clients, must be done carefully. They're doing it, but all I can see as the result are disadvantages such as clients complaining they're being blocked or something, this is bad,. And I actually see no decrease in the spamlistings, so it's not just bad but useless. They're doing it wrong (understandable, you filter a word, they change a letter. Humans still read it, filters don't).

  2. There're too many FLs already. Many never got not even a single job.

  3. Normal jobs are still there. They're not decreasing, and FLs are still working on them. There's an unlimited supply of FLs (see point #2), and some veteran FLs with hundreds of thousand dollar income are also still working as well. Even an UW staff came here a few days ago mentioning about scams "he just noticed". So it's not a big deal for them.

 

 

 

dzadza
Community Member

6 house cleaning jobs in graphic design, lol
that's so ridiculous, I'm not even going to report them... 

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